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xyzzysqrlThe world today seems absolutely crackers
with nuclear bombs to blow us all sky-high
there's fools and idiots sitting on the triggers
It's depressing, and it's senseless... - Eric Idle.
The song wanders off from there, but it's been on my mind of late. It has been really hard to maintain any kind of cheerful optimism nowadays. I haven't wanted to do any game streaming (although would anyone really care if I gave that up?), I've barely wanted to talk to people or engage in any kind of emotional attachment to things.
The world does have some good things in it though. Let's embrace the comforting warmth of video games to get through these trying times. I'm going to turn to one of the things I love most: Games targeted towards teenage girls. No, that doesn't mean it's time for Nancy Drew. It's time for Style Savvy: Fashion Forward.
No, I'm serious. Trust me here. Something brightly colored and cheerful will at least help ME feel better, and we'll see if it helps out any of y'all too. I've got the game itself preordered, but I'm gonna play through the demo here and now. Let's see what we think, yeah?
First off, here's the intro movie, with a bouncy little song. (Yes, it does say 'New Style Boutique'. Regional naming.) That dollhouse motif has more of a place in the real game than it does in this demo. Still, I like the theme of the song itself. Take a chance! Grab for your dreams! Take control of your life and make it what you want it to be! Escape through a door into a fantasy! Accept handbags from a giant hand in the sky!
Let's do some of that stuff.
There's no carryover to the 'real' game in this demo, the demo is a self-contained micro-scenario. Accordingly I don't worry too hard about our avatar. In the real game you'll likely see a tiny feminine Sqrlvatar running around. For this demo, I've created Alice here.
And that, plus a loading screen of a cartoon train is all we get before we're thrust into gameplay. Meet Sophie!
She's a concerned local who's noticed Alice seems lost and confused, possibly because Alice was expecting to get off the mysterious train at the Animal Crossing stop but overslept. Oh well, welcome to Beaumonde City, Alice! Hope you SURVIVE THE STAY wait no wrong genre. Sophie, by an astounding coincidence, happens to run a fashion boutique not too far from the train station.
Sophie gives Alice the once-over, finds her personal fashion style to be pretty good, and invites her to try entering some photos of herself in modelling contests. This is a real thing we can do in the full version, since Nintendo runs online contests with this game. She also invites Alice along to see the boutique. Since we have no other contacts or obligations in town... hey, why not? Alice is polite enough to point the way...
...But there's someone outside the shop. A MYSTERIOUS FIGURE. Could this be our spy contact? No, we don't have one of those, this is still a game about fashion.
Hope here seems to be sketching someone, while loudly complaining that she isn't anything like the person she's sketching. Hope, that's fine! Self-inserts are usually frowned upon in the fan fiction community. Devel-- oh it's because she's drawing one of the shop assistants, and panics when confronted.
I know screaming "I HAVE TO GO BYE" is MY go-to tactic for leaving uncomfortable conversations! You think I'm kidding. Ahaha. Heh. Mhf. In her smoke-bomb-and-leave hurry to exit, however, Hope forgets her notebook and Callie the shop assistant picks it up. Wait, that's her. Really well-drawn, too! Pausing only to introduce herself to Alice, Callie hurries off to return the notebook.
Of course we follow. This is teen drama MTV wishes it could be airing. Does MTV still air teen dramas? I have no idea, I'm not cool. Anyway, we're in hot pursuit.
Did I say hot? I meant casual. We're in leisurely pursuit. Set impulse engines to stroll. (Hey, is that Callie back there on the billboard?)
Arriving at the scene, we find Callie and Hope deep in conversation.
So you can guess how that's going. Callie busts out an "Oi, calm down." which lets me know that this game is probably going to be using the existing British localization rather than retranslating for US tastes. "You're pretty good," she Ocelots. "You really got my cool style down. I could feel it coming off the page."
"Did... Did I just get a complement from Callie?" Hope gawks.
"Yes you did. You're talented. There, now you've got another one." Callie replies. Hee. "You need more self-confidence. ALWAYS accept compliments! Like me, I just say 'thanks' and carry on."
Y'know, I have heard that helps one's self-esteem. Someone compliments you, instead of pushing it off, take it in. Say "Yeah, I AM good.", say "Thank you!" Don't like be a bragging jerk or anything, but just accept the kudos and try to agree with it. I gotta get into that practice more often. Also I have to not let it crush my self-esteem that I am learning about self-esteem from a Japanese video game for teenage fashionistas.
Hope takes maybe the wrong lesson: "I could be like you?" she muses. "Yes... YES! I can do that! Oh my gosh I'm going to try it! I'm going to be like YOU!" she prances off, and Callie glances over towards Alice again.
"I just meant that she should recognise her own abilities without being weird about it." Unfortunately, "Recognizing their own abilties" and "Not being weird" are like the two most difficult things you can ask any artist to do. (Source: I am a furry.)
A couple more places unlock at this time. For one, Alice can go to her apartment ... that she has ... now... *ahem* and change her clothing or make-up. I take the chance to get her into something a little more playful.
This polka-dot outfit looks sharp, but more importantly it's not too overwhelming in the summer heat, with a matching hat for shade and accent. Yet it's not stiffly fancy or overly relaxed. Black tights match the belt and a pair of casual canvas-top trainers let us stroll the town streets in comfort. Plus if worst comes to worst we can steal a major landmark and escape while the police are hunting Carmen Sandiego.
Let's hit up Sophie's boutique... where Hope formally introduces herself to us and begs us to help her solve a little problem.
Uh, we don't... actually work...
Well I mean, there's no harm in helping her pick out some clothing, right? That can't hurt anything. Let's do it. Let's help Hope out.
So here's the core gameplay loop of Style Savvy: You have a customer. (In this case, probably Sophie has a customer but you get it.) The customer has a budget and some desires. Satisfy their desires under budget. I start pawing through Sophie's stock. Let's see... filter by "Bold" clothing... Okay we can work with this. Something Callie-LIKE. Let's see... that top is a near-match. Let's get creative with the legs, accessorize a little, can we land it under-budget...
Callie goes bold and that's reflected in this outfit design. The textures of the fabric pull the eye up and down: Where do you look first? The purple? The black and white? The subtle flowery decoration of the tights? No, the headband commands attention. Little splashes of color and monochrome everywhere. You want attention, Hope? This will get you attention. You want to be like Callie? The comparison is right there.
Nailed it. Hope... pays us, and... uh, leaves to go get coffee as she muses on what else she can do to look more like Callie. So we walk her out...
...and I'm left to reflect if we just committed fraud or what. Unfortunately Sophie is nowhere to be found. ... Sigh. Carmen thoughts, Alice. Carmen thoughts. This may be theft, but it's theft for self-esteem purposes, and doesn't that make it okay? (No.) Let's go after Hope and see what's up at the coffee shop. Oh, hey. We have a profile on Hope now.
I wonder if she has a closet full of roller-coaster t-shirts. I wonder if she's been to Captain's Cove. Hope is still let down by how little she looks like Callie. Maybe it's her hair? Maybe it's her make-up? Maybe, just maybe... it's both! Hope sprints off to the barber shop, and because our life seems to focus around not letting her accidentally self-destruct, we follow.
Okay first Alice can have cake. Then we follow. It's off to the salon, where "Noor"...
...is trying to explain to Hope that Callie has medium, wavy hair. Hope's is long and a totally different texture. There's really not much that can be done. Hope turns her eyes to Alice again. Surely she can magically change the texture of Hope's hair! Surely she can use scissors to somehow make it shorter! Noor looks skeptical that such a thing can be done. Well, at least we can explain we don't work--
-- okay or we can pick up the dang scissors and get to work. First off we quiz Hope about how she feels Callie's hair looks: Cute, or Cool? What kind of fringe? Something bold and black, with purple highlights!
We can colour her purple, we can colour her impressed, and we can pocket about $150 for the hair work. Even Noor is impressed with what we managed, given the base. It's okay. I have a whole interface full of buttons and tooltips. But y'know... as long as you're here, Noor, and as long as I'm pocketing loadsa money off other people's stock...
Now THAT'S an Alice-y hairstyle.
From there it's off to the beautician's, to do roughly the same thing with the same routine. Hope bursts in, begs for a complete facial do-over. The beautician tries to explain that this cannot actually happen, and that Hope would be better in something more girly and feminine instead of something cool and bold...
...and Hope eventually throws it over to Alice, who actually pays attention to what Callie wants instead of trying to upsell her on the full girly. We're allowed full access to the makeup, and Hope, well... is a little creepy honestly?
Like seriously hold up how did you get this information? Oh well. A little bit of careful color-matching later...
...And we might as well have Callie herself in the seat. "It's like I'm channeling her... I feel so much better about myself!" Hope enthuses, and bounces off. As for Ms. Arabella the beautician?
Well, she's learned a valuable lesson about customer relations. "She would've looked adorable with the dainty make-up... but that wasn't she wanted. That's important, isn't it? Everyone should be able to choose how they want to look, without being pressured by anyone else. There's nothing wrong with trying out someone else's style to see how it looks on you."
Which is true. It does feel worryingly like the next step for Hope is draining Callie's blood and piping it into her own veins, but ... no, bright, happy, optimistic universe. We'll be fine.
Let's head back to the shop and see if we can apologize to Sophie for selling her stuff. At the boutique... are Noor and Arabella, and they have huge problems! There's too many customers at the hair salon! Hope told everyone about the makeup job and the beautician's is swamped! You have to buy the full game, right away, to serve all these crowds of customers! OH NO!
Okay ACTUALLY they say they can't make you come work if you're out on holiday and tell you they hope they'll see you again in some more lasting way. But c'mon. Sophie finally turns up, and she's weirdly delighted that Alice sold a bunch of stuff out of the store to a passing artist.
...y'know, I don't see the purple highlights Hope insisted on, now that I really look. Hm. Oh well. Sophie enthuses that we're so darn good at fashion, maybe we should be running the shop, haha. But that'll only happen IN THE FULL VERSION, EH WOT?
*ahem* I mean: And that's the "end" of the demo. You can continue playing and serving customers, putting together outfits and such ... But I think that's enough for one day, eh? There's no new story content from here on out.
So... What did you all think? I've got the game on pre-order, but... d'you think a running diary, Animal Crossing style, will hold anyone's attention?
with nuclear bombs to blow us all sky-high
there's fools and idiots sitting on the triggers
It's depressing, and it's senseless... - Eric Idle.
The song wanders off from there, but it's been on my mind of late. It has been really hard to maintain any kind of cheerful optimism nowadays. I haven't wanted to do any game streaming (although would anyone really care if I gave that up?), I've barely wanted to talk to people or engage in any kind of emotional attachment to things.
The world does have some good things in it though. Let's embrace the comforting warmth of video games to get through these trying times. I'm going to turn to one of the things I love most: Games targeted towards teenage girls. No, that doesn't mean it's time for Nancy Drew. It's time for Style Savvy: Fashion Forward.
No, I'm serious. Trust me here. Something brightly colored and cheerful will at least help ME feel better, and we'll see if it helps out any of y'all too. I've got the game itself preordered, but I'm gonna play through the demo here and now. Let's see what we think, yeah?
First off, here's the intro movie, with a bouncy little song. (Yes, it does say 'New Style Boutique'. Regional naming.) That dollhouse motif has more of a place in the real game than it does in this demo. Still, I like the theme of the song itself. Take a chance! Grab for your dreams! Take control of your life and make it what you want it to be! Escape through a door into a fantasy! Accept handbags from a giant hand in the sky!
Let's do some of that stuff.
There's no carryover to the 'real' game in this demo, the demo is a self-contained micro-scenario. Accordingly I don't worry too hard about our avatar. In the real game you'll likely see a tiny feminine Sqrlvatar running around. For this demo, I've created Alice here.
And that, plus a loading screen of a cartoon train is all we get before we're thrust into gameplay. Meet Sophie!
She's a concerned local who's noticed Alice seems lost and confused, possibly because Alice was expecting to get off the mysterious train at the Animal Crossing stop but overslept. Oh well, welcome to Beaumonde City, Alice! Hope you SURVIVE THE STAY wait no wrong genre. Sophie, by an astounding coincidence, happens to run a fashion boutique not too far from the train station.
Sophie gives Alice the once-over, finds her personal fashion style to be pretty good, and invites her to try entering some photos of herself in modelling contests. This is a real thing we can do in the full version, since Nintendo runs online contests with this game. She also invites Alice along to see the boutique. Since we have no other contacts or obligations in town... hey, why not? Alice is polite enough to point the way...
...But there's someone outside the shop. A MYSTERIOUS FIGURE. Could this be our spy contact? No, we don't have one of those, this is still a game about fashion.
Hope here seems to be sketching someone, while loudly complaining that she isn't anything like the person she's sketching. Hope, that's fine! Self-inserts are usually frowned upon in the fan fiction community. Devel-- oh it's because she's drawing one of the shop assistants, and panics when confronted.
I know screaming "I HAVE TO GO BYE" is MY go-to tactic for leaving uncomfortable conversations! You think I'm kidding. Ahaha. Heh. Mhf. In her smoke-bomb-and-leave hurry to exit, however, Hope forgets her notebook and Callie the shop assistant picks it up. Wait, that's her. Really well-drawn, too! Pausing only to introduce herself to Alice, Callie hurries off to return the notebook.
Of course we follow. This is teen drama MTV wishes it could be airing. Does MTV still air teen dramas? I have no idea, I'm not cool. Anyway, we're in hot pursuit.
Did I say hot? I meant casual. We're in leisurely pursuit. Set impulse engines to stroll. (Hey, is that Callie back there on the billboard?)
Arriving at the scene, we find Callie and Hope deep in conversation.
So you can guess how that's going. Callie busts out an "Oi, calm down." which lets me know that this game is probably going to be using the existing British localization rather than retranslating for US tastes. "You're pretty good," she Ocelots. "You really got my cool style down. I could feel it coming off the page."
"Did... Did I just get a complement from Callie?" Hope gawks.
"Yes you did. You're talented. There, now you've got another one." Callie replies. Hee. "You need more self-confidence. ALWAYS accept compliments! Like me, I just say 'thanks' and carry on."
Y'know, I have heard that helps one's self-esteem. Someone compliments you, instead of pushing it off, take it in. Say "Yeah, I AM good.", say "Thank you!" Don't like be a bragging jerk or anything, but just accept the kudos and try to agree with it. I gotta get into that practice more often. Also I have to not let it crush my self-esteem that I am learning about self-esteem from a Japanese video game for teenage fashionistas.
Hope takes maybe the wrong lesson: "I could be like you?" she muses. "Yes... YES! I can do that! Oh my gosh I'm going to try it! I'm going to be like YOU!" she prances off, and Callie glances over towards Alice again.
"I just meant that she should recognise her own abilities without being weird about it." Unfortunately, "Recognizing their own abilties" and "Not being weird" are like the two most difficult things you can ask any artist to do. (Source: I am a furry.)
A couple more places unlock at this time. For one, Alice can go to her apartment ... that she has ... now... *ahem* and change her clothing or make-up. I take the chance to get her into something a little more playful.
This polka-dot outfit looks sharp, but more importantly it's not too overwhelming in the summer heat, with a matching hat for shade and accent. Yet it's not stiffly fancy or overly relaxed. Black tights match the belt and a pair of casual canvas-top trainers let us stroll the town streets in comfort. Plus if worst comes to worst we can steal a major landmark and escape while the police are hunting Carmen Sandiego.
Let's hit up Sophie's boutique... where Hope formally introduces herself to us and begs us to help her solve a little problem.
Uh, we don't... actually work...
Well I mean, there's no harm in helping her pick out some clothing, right? That can't hurt anything. Let's do it. Let's help Hope out.
So here's the core gameplay loop of Style Savvy: You have a customer. (In this case, probably Sophie has a customer but you get it.) The customer has a budget and some desires. Satisfy their desires under budget. I start pawing through Sophie's stock. Let's see... filter by "Bold" clothing... Okay we can work with this. Something Callie-LIKE. Let's see... that top is a near-match. Let's get creative with the legs, accessorize a little, can we land it under-budget...
Callie goes bold and that's reflected in this outfit design. The textures of the fabric pull the eye up and down: Where do you look first? The purple? The black and white? The subtle flowery decoration of the tights? No, the headband commands attention. Little splashes of color and monochrome everywhere. You want attention, Hope? This will get you attention. You want to be like Callie? The comparison is right there.
Nailed it. Hope... pays us, and... uh, leaves to go get coffee as she muses on what else she can do to look more like Callie. So we walk her out...
...and I'm left to reflect if we just committed fraud or what. Unfortunately Sophie is nowhere to be found. ... Sigh. Carmen thoughts, Alice. Carmen thoughts. This may be theft, but it's theft for self-esteem purposes, and doesn't that make it okay? (No.) Let's go after Hope and see what's up at the coffee shop. Oh, hey. We have a profile on Hope now.
I wonder if she has a closet full of roller-coaster t-shirts. I wonder if she's been to Captain's Cove. Hope is still let down by how little she looks like Callie. Maybe it's her hair? Maybe it's her make-up? Maybe, just maybe... it's both! Hope sprints off to the barber shop, and because our life seems to focus around not letting her accidentally self-destruct, we follow.
Okay first Alice can have cake. Then we follow. It's off to the salon, where "Noor"...
...is trying to explain to Hope that Callie has medium, wavy hair. Hope's is long and a totally different texture. There's really not much that can be done. Hope turns her eyes to Alice again. Surely she can magically change the texture of Hope's hair! Surely she can use scissors to somehow make it shorter! Noor looks skeptical that such a thing can be done. Well, at least we can explain we don't work--
-- okay or we can pick up the dang scissors and get to work. First off we quiz Hope about how she feels Callie's hair looks: Cute, or Cool? What kind of fringe? Something bold and black, with purple highlights!
We can colour her purple, we can colour her impressed, and we can pocket about $150 for the hair work. Even Noor is impressed with what we managed, given the base. It's okay. I have a whole interface full of buttons and tooltips. But y'know... as long as you're here, Noor, and as long as I'm pocketing loadsa money off other people's stock...
Now THAT'S an Alice-y hairstyle.
From there it's off to the beautician's, to do roughly the same thing with the same routine. Hope bursts in, begs for a complete facial do-over. The beautician tries to explain that this cannot actually happen, and that Hope would be better in something more girly and feminine instead of something cool and bold...
...and Hope eventually throws it over to Alice, who actually pays attention to what Callie wants instead of trying to upsell her on the full girly. We're allowed full access to the makeup, and Hope, well... is a little creepy honestly?
Like seriously hold up how did you get this information? Oh well. A little bit of careful color-matching later...
...And we might as well have Callie herself in the seat. "It's like I'm channeling her... I feel so much better about myself!" Hope enthuses, and bounces off. As for Ms. Arabella the beautician?
Well, she's learned a valuable lesson about customer relations. "She would've looked adorable with the dainty make-up... but that wasn't she wanted. That's important, isn't it? Everyone should be able to choose how they want to look, without being pressured by anyone else. There's nothing wrong with trying out someone else's style to see how it looks on you."
Which is true. It does feel worryingly like the next step for Hope is draining Callie's blood and piping it into her own veins, but ... no, bright, happy, optimistic universe. We'll be fine.
Let's head back to the shop and see if we can apologize to Sophie for selling her stuff. At the boutique... are Noor and Arabella, and they have huge problems! There's too many customers at the hair salon! Hope told everyone about the makeup job and the beautician's is swamped! You have to buy the full game, right away, to serve all these crowds of customers! OH NO!
Okay ACTUALLY they say they can't make you come work if you're out on holiday and tell you they hope they'll see you again in some more lasting way. But c'mon. Sophie finally turns up, and she's weirdly delighted that Alice sold a bunch of stuff out of the store to a passing artist.
...y'know, I don't see the purple highlights Hope insisted on, now that I really look. Hm. Oh well. Sophie enthuses that we're so darn good at fashion, maybe we should be running the shop, haha. But that'll only happen IN THE FULL VERSION, EH WOT?
*ahem* I mean: And that's the "end" of the demo. You can continue playing and serving customers, putting together outfits and such ... But I think that's enough for one day, eh? There's no new story content from here on out.
So... What did you all think? I've got the game on pre-order, but... d'you think a running diary, Animal Crossing style, will hold anyone's attention?
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no subject
Date: 2016-08-09 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 04:21 am (UTC)That being said, would I be interested in reading more of this? Oh God yes absolutely. One demo entry in and you already just about had me on the floor at parts, and I already have favorite lines which I shall refrain from parroting back because people generally hate when you do that. But trust me, your writing is as entertaining as ever.
Also your fashion descriptions are amazingly insightful. Like, I got about halfway through Trendsetters before other games happen, so I've been putting outfits together for people a lot, but I don't think I ever thought of the detailed specs like that beyond "This top is in the Bold category like she wanted and, uh, I think it's pretty?"
So yeah, I for one am all for this.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-07 09:07 pm (UTC): Unfortunately, "Recognizing their own abilties" and "Not being weird" are like the two most difficult things you can ask any artist to do. :
This ^^^ had me on the floor, I was guffawing so hard. I would love to read more of this.
no subject
Date: 2016-08-08 03:35 pm (UTC)I wouldn't mind seeing a series of this myself. Wonder if you can get Hope a knife, so she can live her dream of being the 'only' Callie? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2016-08-09 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-09 04:23 pm (UTC)(I'd likely be playing it now as well, save for it being a 3DS-only title. I wonder if there's something similar for iOS or macOS.. maybe it's time to go snuffling around Steam)